Walking on Water
First SLIS Ph.D. graduates meet high expectations
by Meara
Keegan
Six years, two students, countless faculty
and staff, and plenty of blood, sweat and tears later and
the moment finally arrived. On May 4, 2012, Dr. Clayton Copeland
and Dr. Christine Angel became the first students to graduate
from the School of Library and Information Science Ph.D.
program. Dr. Samantha Hastings, SLIS director, jokes, “The
requirements for completing this program are to first walk
on water.” For Dr. Copeland
and Dr. Angel, though, this may not have been too far from
the truth.
The challenge of starting a doctoral program
and bringing it to fruition is a difficult challenge. Dr.
Dan Barron, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and former director
of SLIS, and Dr. Bob Williams, Distinguished Professor Emeritus,
did the groundwork for the program. The first doctoral students
were admitted to the program in 2006, the same year Dr. Hastings
arrived.
It was fate that
first landed Dr. Copeland in the Master of Library and Information
Science program at the University of South Carolina. When
she began to look at master’s programs, memories of
her own school librarians, Ellen Ramsey and Vicky Culbertson,
flooded back to her. “They are both graduates of the
MLIS program and always shared their love for the school
and its faculty with me.”
The school’s reputation and academic rigor are what
first brought her into the MLIS program. While she was earning
her master’s degree, she says she “developed
a deep respect and love for the school and its community.” Her
decision to continue her education in the new doctoral program
came after forming a relationship with Dr. Hastings.
Dr. Copeland says, “I have such immense respect for
our faculty and staff, and for Dr. Hastings. With great debt
to her vision, we have a program that is incredible in every
way.” The doctoral program has provided great opportunities
for Dr. Copeland and her peers. “We have attended and
presented research at national and international coferences.”
A Conversation with Dr. Clayton Copeland
Dr. Copeland’s
dissertation, Equity of Access to Information: A Comparative
Exploration of Library Accessibility and Information Access
from Differently-Able Patrons’ Perspectives, focuses
on how consistent the availability of information is for differently-able
compared to typically-able library users. Her research analyzes
whether the information available to each participant is unbiased
and equal. She has accepted a post-doctoral fellowship with
SLIS, where she will work in the areas of program development
and evaluation.
As a captain in the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Angel is no stranger
to hard work. While she worked toward her doctoral degree,
she also was an aircraft maintenance officer at Pope Air
Force Base in Fayetteville, N.C. Although she planned to
graduate from the program last year, deployment with the
military temporarily derailed those plans. While her dedication
to the military delayed her completion of the program as
planned, Dr. Angel has not wavered in her commitment to her
career after graduation. She has accepted a faculty position
at St. John’s University in New York City.
Dr. Angel has a great passion
for library and information studies now, but she first earned
a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and a Master of Science
in instructional technology from East Carolina University,
and then a Master of Science in library science from North
Carolina Central University. Her first years as a doctoral
student at USC brought some struggles, as “she had
to find her footing,” she says.
Dr. Angel considers herself
an anthropologist with a passionate interest in semiotics
and wanted to bring these studies to the world of library
and information science. Her dissertation incorporated her
fondness for anthropological studies, her passion for library
and information science and her interest in Native American
culture.
Dr. Angel’s research, A Comparison of Descriptive
Tagging Practices by Library, Archive, and Museum Professionals
using an Inter-Indexing Consistency Approach, explores the
descriptive tagging and online digital collections among
information professionals working in library, archive and
museum institutions.
A Conversation with Dr. Christine Angel
A website developed
as part of her dissertation research allowed information
professionals worldwide to view images of randomly selected
digital artifacts, including some Catawba Native American
artifacts, and describe those objects using descriptive tags.
The future of this program
is bright. Another 10 doctoral students have entered the program
since the original cohort. With less than eight percent of
the U.S. population earning doctoral degrees, these students
are truly in an elite club. For two of them, May 5 marked the
beginning of their professional lives and their time to affect
change.
Meara Keegan is a senior public relations
major from Atlanta, Georgia. She wrote this article for the
Spring 2012 issue of InterCom, the alumni publication of
the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies.
